More About the Cause of Death

CNN reports that one of Benazir Bhutto's top aides, who helped bathe the body after the assassination, contends that "there were clear bullet injuries to her head."

The aide also says, "It's beginning to look like a coverup to me."

The aide refers to assertions by the Pakistani government that Bhutto suffered no gunshot or bomb shrapnel injuries, but instead died after striking her head on a lever inside her vehicle.

That is the third and most recent version of events as provided by the Pakistani government.

If there is a coverup in the works in Pakistan, I would say that al-Qaeda -- or whoever is behind the plot -- has a lot to learn about engineering and carrying out a successful coverup.

There have been high profile assassinations in this country -- i.e., John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King -- and there always has been a segment of the population that has been convinced that they were the results of conspiracies.

But if they were plots, they were designed to answer (however weakly, in some cases) questions that were bound to come up or confuse the issue on questions that couldn't be convincingly answered.

It's called "plausible deniability." You've got to pick a story and stick with it. Constantly changing a story to deal with inconvenient facts makes the case weaker.

If the responsibility for Bhutto's murder is being covered up, the perpetrators didn't plan well enough to deal effectively with the most obvious question that was likely to come up.

Was Bhutto shot from up close? (If you're familiar with Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, you know that a similar question has dogged the case for nearly 40 years. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, fired his weapon from Kennedy's side, but witnesses have said there were bullet wounds in the back of Kennedy's head, supposedly fired from point-blank range. Sirhan was a few feet away, and he was never in a position to fire his gun at the back of Kennedy's head.)

This is why I have said that it probably will be necessary to exhume the body and perform a proper autopsy to obtain definitive answers.

An autopsy can tell us, for example, whether someone was struck by gunfire -- and how close the weapon was when it was fired. With the lack of security, it's possible that the shot was fired from inside the vehicle. The suicide bomber, who was captured on film firing a gun, may have been equipped only with blanks -- possibly a diversionary tactic. His bomb may have been intended to obliterate all evidence -- and accomplices.

But the most important evidence -- the body itself -- is still available.

The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration is worried about a new offensive by Islamic extremists in the region.

At the very least, in the United States, this is an important opportunity for voters to find out how much each presidential candidate really knows about the world and its politics.

If recent comments tell us anything about Mike Huckabee, for example, they indicate that those who expressed concerns about his lack of foreign policy experience were sadly correct in their assessments.

The New York Times reports that, in the aftermath of the assassination, candidates with foreign policy credentials who hadn't caught on with the voters (i.e., Joe Biden and Bill Richardson) are finding themselves in the spotlight. Whether those candidates remain in the spotlight, voters need to keep their attention on foreign policy.

George W. Bush's lack of foreign policy expertise came up briefly in the 2000 campaign, but it was soon reduced to a very low order of priority. Voters seemed to find the trait endearing and preferred to discuss the economy, taxes, Social Security and other domestic issues -- and leave foreign policy matters to Dick Cheney's "gravitas."

And that was despite the fact that terrorists attacked the U.S.S. Cole less than a month before the election.

David Frum says, in the National Post, that candidates in both parties have demonstrated "truly disturbing indifference to the outside world and its dangers," and he urges them to "confront some dangerously neglected facts."

What's the view of the crisis from other parts of the world? Well, The Australian says America fails to protect its Muslim allies. It's hard to argue that point.

In 2008, voters will have to debate the foreign policy merits of each candidate. We have to educate ourselves about the world and we have to insist on leaders who know as much about the globe as they do about voting districts and demographics.

If we're fortunate enough in the future to have another Benazir Bhutto on our side in the Muslim world, we have to do everything in our power to protect her. We clearly cannot count on governments like the one ruling Pakistan.

Isolationism is not practical. And neither is it practical to assume the rest of the world wants to be just like the United States.